Debuting at #2, the album Crash by Dave Matthews Band, has their biggest ever single, Crash Into Me. Thirty years later it continues to have decent airplay and on Spotify, Crash Into Me has 130% more plays than their second most popular song, Ants Marching. The ratio is similar on last.fm.

I have always been pretty neutral about Dave Matthews Band. I find the music inoffensive but not all that moving. It's almost never something I choose to listen to, but I don't skip it when it comes on. Crash is very 90s, and certainly if I wanted some 90s nostalgia, it would be a solid choice. I suggest that if you want to try to capture the 90s for a few songs, you can put it on.

Finally, whatever your opinion is of Dave Matthews Band, they don't rock.

Hitting #1 in its first week, this is the second Hootie & the Blowfish album I've reviewed. I can't recall ever hearing any of the songs off this album before, and according to last.fm, it's entirely likely I'm correct.

My feelings on this album mostly mirror that of Cracked Rear View. It's fine. Extremely 90s. Listen to it, or don't. Whatevs.

I've always preferred Rage Against the Machine's eponymous first album over Evil Empire. That being said, this weeks #1 album is wholly worthy of that position.

Thirty years later, the machine is still very much active. Look at who is in the White House, has control of Congress, and the Supreme Court. We have a wannabe fascist president, a congress that has abdicated their constitutional powers, and a SCOTUS that rules based on desired political outcomes. AI is coming to take our jobs away, only the very rich are getting ahead in this economy, and the US is steadily ruining our democracy via gerrymandering and media that spreads lies and misinformation. Rage Against the Machine is no longer making music, but they remain as relevant as ever. I always enjoy reading stories about idiots (AKA conservatives) who don't understand they're the machine being raged against.

My recommendation is to listen to this album whenever you need to get angry about things you should get angry about. This is unfortunately all the time at the moment.

I really like this art from Kid #1. It's all doodles but I like the colors. It reminds me of the late 1980s or early 90s. I could imagine these shapes on some clothes worn by a cast member of Saved by the Bell.

I don't have much to say about this week's #6 album. I was never all that into Geto Boys, and The Resurrection didn't change my mind. Perhaps the most notable thing about the album is that the second song on the album, "Still", was used in the famous printer smashing scene of the movie Office Space. I have no strong opinions if you should listen to this album, which I suppose means it's probably not worth your time.

I am super late on this review by almost two weeks, so I'll make this short. Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop by Stone Temple Pilots hit #4 in its first week on the charts. Tiny Music is worth your time. Check it out!

According to this web page I found, despite breaking up in 1969/1970, Beatles albums continued to be released fairly regularly in the years since. I've already reviewed two of them, Live at the BBC and Anthology 1. Any new Beatles album has a good chance of reaching the top ten of the charts. Indeed I'll review Anthology 3 in November of this year, and if I'm still doing this in four years, 1 in December of 2030.

This review of Anthology 2 (sitting at #1 on the charts) is basically the same as my earlier ones. This is an album of outtakes, rarities, and live performances that clocks in at over two hours. This is not the way to be introduced to the Beatles. But if you're already familiar with their body of work (and if you're not, how? why? what? where? who? how?), an occasional listen to this is a good idea.

Circa 1999 I went on a road trip with some college friends to the Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California and Crater Lake in Oregon. The Lava Beds is in the middle of nowhere close to absolutely nothing of importance. I can't remember if we forgot to pack enough cassette tapes of music¹, or we wanted to see what was on the radio, but we discovered an all Céline Dion, all the time radio station. It was the only station that came in, so we listened to it for a while. It didn't play any advertisements, so we suspected it was a pirate radio station. It is entirely likely that during that trip was the most recent time I've listened to as much Céline Dion as I did for Falling Into You.

The album hit #2 in its first week on the charts. Apparently it's her most successful album by number of sales and has won many awards. It featured the song Because You Loved Me written for the movie Up Close & Personal. I don't think I've ever heard the song before nor watched the movie (and I won't be remedying the latter).

It may not surprise you that I didn't care for this album, and I will not be listening to it again. I guess lots of people like(d) it, but lots of people can be wrong: there's evidence of that everywhere, just look around.

1. The car didn't have a CD player and 1999 was before iPods and cell phones that played music, kids! ↩︎

A few months ago I reviewed the soundtrack for the movie Dangerous Minds and wrote "the album is defined by and entirely worth the value of (the song) Gangsta's Paradise, and the rest is worth forgetting." While this week's #9 album Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio does have the song of the same name, it contains more hits than the movie soundtrack. In addition to (the song) Gangsta's Paradise, 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin' New) charted quite well, as well did a cover of Too Hot.

This album isn't half bad. I'm not sure I'll listen to it much going forward, but I didn't find it objectionable. I suppose that's faint praise, but compared to soundtrack, it's much more worth your time.

This review is a week late. Last week was spring break and I went on vacation. I'll keep this short!

Hitting #3 in its third week on the charts, The Score by Fugees is their second and final studio album.

Despite the popularity of The Score, the only song I think I've heard before is the cover Killing Me Softly. That song was everywhere in 1996. Two of the members of Fugees, Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, have gone onto even better things post-Fugees. The third Fugee, Pras, did not go onto better things. He is in prison for funneling foreign money to Obama's second presidential campaign.

Overall, it's good hip-hop and worth a listen.

Starting in February of this year I decided to ride my bike on every road in Boulder. Every neighborhood, every dead-end, and every circle. I didn't do very much detailed planning for this. I didn't try to optimize my routes to minimize distance. I figured that the worst case was that I rode my bike a bit extra, and that's fine by me. Even with perfect planning there are road configurations that require some duplication anyway, so I wasn't bothered by repeating segments more than once. Also, since this was always going to be a multi-day endeavour, I knew I would have to repeat some segments that brought me to neighborhoods starting from my home.

To be clear, I didn't ride every road completely, I had some rules:

• I didn't ride dangerous roads. There are a few very busy roads in Boulder that lack a safe place to ride; they don't even have a gutter bike lane. No one paid me to do this, and being super-ultra complete isn't worth the danger
• I didn't do alleys. I love a good alleyway, and when I'm dictator I will require them to be built everywhere, but I didn't ride them for this project

• I limited myself to roads actually in the city of Boulder. There are unincorporated islands within the city of Boulder, and I didn't ride in those unless I used them to get to other roads. For example, there are a number of unincorporated islands pictured below and I didn't do some of these roads

  

• There is some ambiguity about when a road is actually in Boulder and not. Some city boundaries run along roads as pictured below. City roads have blue and white signs, while county roads are given green and white signs. Some of these border roads have green signs, and some have blue. In general I would use the color of the street sign to guide me as to if it was a city or county road. As an aside, I ended up riding on the road below because I used it to get to a part of Boulder that is only accessible via county roads

  

• If a street had a "Private road, no city maintenance" sign, I didn't ride on it. Some private streets have green signs, which I would skip. I made two exceptions: NCAR and NIST. These are (semi-)governmental entities and therefore aren't private. Both are contained in city limits, so I felt it was appropriate to ride on them. I probably ended up riding on private roads here and there, but if they had a blue sign and no "Private street" sign, I figured it was fine for me to use it

• Similarly, I didn't do parking lots and other obviously private roads, like the roads in the IBM campus
• Some roads are under construction, and are either inaccessible or a complete mess. I avoided these as necessary or prudent
• I only needed to ride on a road in at least one direction, including divided roads
• I didn't focus on bike paths, but if one helped me get where I was going, I used it

I enjoyed this project. I visited parts of Boulder I had never seen before. I started to connect disparate parts of Boulder by era of development and design commonalities. For example, some residential neighborhoods have dead-end circles with parking in the middle. I found this design in a few places scattered across the city. All the older parts of Boulder have alleys, but mid-century developments stopped using them, likely because developers wanted to save money. However, some of the newest developments in Boulder have brought them back, because they are useful and a good idea, which I think is excellent.

Again, the project was fun, but I'm looking forward to getting back to more normal riding, where I'm not constantly changing direction and checking my GPS map for where I need to go next.

Here are some statistics:

• It took me 18 rides total
• 37 hours and 17 minutes of riding time
• 887 KM of distance
• 7,300 meters of climbing

Here's an animation of my progress¹. The date and time is shown in the bottom right corner. To get the full effect, you'll want to view it on YouTube, full screen the video, and switch to 4K resolution. You can adjust the playback speed to make the video run faster, if you like. There are a few hiccups in the animation where progress backtracks and repeats. It's not in the original file I uploaded to YouTube and I have no idea what's going on.

Finally, I've updated my cycling history map page to include all of this new data.

1. I used GPX Animator ↩︎

I've always felt that this week's #6 artist, The Presidents of the United States of America, were kind of a jokey band. Their big hits, Lump and Peaches, off of their eponymous album, are odd with not quite sensical lyrics. The songs are fun earworms, certainly, but I would not call them sophisticated. The band are not one-hit wonders¹. However, they are one-trick ponies, and one-trick ponies do not have staying power.

My recommendation is that PotUSA is fine, but nothing essential. Listen to them when you want a taste of the 90s, but only a taste, because they're not a full meal.

1. They are two-hit wonders and should have been featured in this radio show. ↩︎

Hitting #1 in its first week, All Eyez On Me by 2Pac, is one of the most highly-regarded rap albums ever. 1996 was peak Gangsta Rap, 2Pac was a genre-defining Gangsta Rap performer, and All Eyez On Me is one of the best examples of the genre.

I've never been that into 2Pac. I'll enjoy a play of California Love from time to time, but I am not a 2Pac aficionado. The last rap album I reviewed (by Easy-E) I didn't particularly like and I felt it was poorly made. Conversely, I can tell that All Eyez On Me is a high-quality album, and while I don't listen to it very often, I don't think I will never again listen to it. If you want some Gangsta Rap, you can't go wrong with this album.

Hitting #9 after ten weeks in the charts, Enya's The Memory of Trees is boring. I can't even generate the energy to have my own opinions about it. There are very few occasions when I want her music played, and this album did not change my priors. Judging by the popularity of her albums on last.fm, even those who like Enya agree that this album is not her best. There it is the fifth most-listened to album, with one third the listeners compared to her most popular album, A Day Without Rain.

There's no reason to ever listen to this album. It turns out the trees may have memory, but this album is forgettable.

Here's a bunch of various kid arts for February, 2026.